Apple judgment sets private privacy against public security

A protest against at the US government’s efforts to force Apple to help it hack into the iPhone of one of the San Bernardino terrorist attackers. ‘If our (privacy) rights as citizens are to be championed by a private enterprise, what does this mean for our relationship to the state?’ asks Saville Kushner.
Photograph: Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images

The judicial decision to back Apple against the FBI is extraordinary and profoundly significant (Report, 1 March). What it says is that we place higher trust in a corporate giant to protect our privacy than we do in a democratically accountable government agency to protect our security. I do not look at the FBI through rose-tinted spectacles, but nor do I ignore the potential market killing that the aggressive capitalist Apple will make out of this high-profile judgment. If our (privacy) rights as citizens are to be championed by a private enterprise, what does this mean for our relationship to the state? Are we transferring elements of our citizenship to the corporate sector and diminishing our relationship to the political state?

I find horrifying the erosion of hard-won citizen rights by governments under a false warrant of fighting terrorism. But I would rather believe that there is a court of appeal and accountability, albeit distant, to defend those rights against government incursions, whereas Apple plays fast and loose with us – whatever turns a profit. Of course there are technical solutions to the impasse that would still protect our rights. If they had been potentially more profitable to Apple than taking this stand, it would be naive to think that it would not have conceded. Saville KushnerProfessor of public evaluation, faculty of education, University of Auckland, New Zealand